Marines activate for Afghan wind down

1st Marine Expeditionary Force Forward heads out in early 2014

Following a brief ceremony for the uncasing of the unit's battle colors, Brig. Gen. Daniel Yoo spoke to his Marines that will deploy with him to Afghanistan early next year . 1 MEF (Fwd) will deploy to Helmand province, southwest Afghanistan, early 2014 and take over responsibility and command of Regional command from II MEF.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Following a brief ceremony for the uncasing of the unit's battle colors, Brig. Gen. Daniel Yoo spoke to his Marines that will deploy with him to Afghanistan early next year . 1 MEF (Fwd) will deploy to Helmand province, southwest Afghanistan, early 2014 and take over responsibility and command of Regional command from II MEF.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Camp Pendleton Marines conducted an activation ceremony on Wednesday for the headquarters unit that will supervise the wind down of Marine forces in southern Afghanistan over the next year.

Brig. Gen. Daniel Yoo and Sgt. Maj. Douglas Berry uncased the battle colors for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Forward. They will be the commanding general and sergeant major for the force.

That unit will deploy to Helmand province in southwestern Afghanistan in early 2014 to take over responsibility for the Regional Command Southwest, currently being run by Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Yoo called the day a milestone.

“It’s historic because we’ve helped the country reestablish its sovereignty and hopefully integrate into the international community … and be stable and inclusive,” said the one-star general, who was until recently the commanding general of the Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego.

“As we move out of there, I think all of us have a lot of friends that we’ve left behind in that country.”

This week’s ceremony was something of a bookend to a similar event in October 2009, when Camp Pendleton stood up a brigade headquarters to lead the surge of Marines back into Afghanistan.

At that time, the Marines were coming off six years of hard combat in Iraq, which siphoned attention away from the Afghanistan war.

In December 2009, President Barack Obama announced that 30,000 American troops would flow to Afghanistan in an attempt to end the war there.

Since then, the Marines – including Camp Pendleton’s 1st Marine Expeditionary Force – have weathered heavy fighting and casualties in order to pacify the volatile Helmand Province, a longtime stronghold for the Taliban.

Obama has set the end of 2014 as the deadline to withdraw most American forces.

Prior to the brief ceremony for the uncasing of the unit's battle colors, Lt. Gen John A. Toolan spoked to Marines that will deploy to Afghanistan early next year . 1 MEF (Fwd) will deploy to Helmand province, southwest Afghanistan, early 2014 and take over responsibility and command of Regional command from II MEF.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Prior to the brief ceremony for the uncasing of the unit's battle colors, Lt. Gen John A. Toolan spoked to Marines that will deploy to Afghanistan early next year . 1 MEF (Fwd) will deploy to Helmand province, southwest Afghanistan, early 2014 and take over responsibility and command of Regional command from II MEF.
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Negotiations to keep roughly 10,000 U.S. forces there as a stability measure have been contentious.

There currently are an estimated 87,000 international troops in Afghanistan, including about 52,000 Americans.